This part of Alabama came to be called the Black Belt because into it were gathered so many people of African descent--about 400,000--to till the soil and harvest the crops. Some say the name originated from the character of the soil. At the present time the ratio of colored people to white people varies in the different counties from two to six of the former to one of the latter. Averaging the twenty counties, the ratio is about three colored to one white, while the ratio in the State, as a whole, is about one to one. It is thus seen that the Black Belt has an interest and a character of its own, and problems somewhat more pronounced than similar problems in other parts of the State. This was far more the case thirty or even twenty years ago than now. It is doubtful whether any other section of Alabama has made more rapid progress along intellectual and moral lines the past twenty-five years than the Black Belt. Here multiplied schools and colleges and missionary efforts have been doing their utmost, and great has been the result. Just about twenty-seven years ago the writer came from New England into this Black Belt, curious to see and to hear. One Sabbath afternoon it was noised abroad that a famous colored preacher was to speak in one of the large town churches. His text was, "And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels." Rev. 12:7. A very difficult text. The sermon, however, was almost wholly about John the "revelator," and not on the text at all. The preacher began by informing his hearers that John was a very wonderful man, and the Romans wanted to kill him, so they put him into a kettle of oil and boiled him and boiled him, but could not kill him. Hence they determined to banish him to Patmos, so they put him on board a ship and sailed for three months over the great ocean, and then they got out the telescope and looked for three thousand miles further over the mighty waters, and there they saw the tip of a great mountain coming up out of the sea, and the great serpents were coiled around the top and were sliding down the sides into the waters, and there was not a cracker there for John. And so, with scarcely a grammatical sentence and with most unfitting words, he went on for an hour with a discourse full of wildness and weirdness, and full of untruth, while the people looked on with amazement at the wonderful knowledge and power of the man. Twenty or thirty years ago you might hear many similar sermons. But now, were you to go into the churches in the cities and larger towns of the Black Belt, you would find no place for the old-time preacher or the old-time sermon, but instead you would find in the pulpit a man of considerable education and refinement, preaching good gospel truth to an attentive audience. Some of the causes and evidences of progress in the Black Belt, both of preachers and people, may well pass in review at this point.